CAPSULE:
This film is a Portuguese fantasy written and
directed by Manoel de Oliveira. The pace is operatic
and slow enough so that there is not much story here.
Some dreamlike photography and a soothing musical score
are pluses but slow, draggy telling is likely to
frustrate the viewer and pay off with far too little
reward for the effort of watching. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4)
or 6/10

Spoiler Warning: There is so little happening in this film to move
the story forward that even saying what the film is about is most
of the plot.

Manoel de Oliveira is the oldest known film director still working.
He was born December 11, 1908. That makes him just short of 103 as
of this writing; he was 101 when me made this film. If he is
slowing down, it is not enough to stop him from directing. But if
he is, it is showing up in his films. A scene will carry on for
roughly twice as long as most filmmakers would allow it, frequently
just letting the camera linger over a not very engaging setting
with no action. This means that there is not really much story
being told. If I recount nearly anything at all of the plot, it
will probably reveal most of the story.

De Oliveira's story, set in the rural Douro Valley of northern
Portugal, tells of Isaac (played by Ricardo Trepa), a Sephardic
Jew. He is a professional photographer called in the middle of the
night on an emergency job. A woman, Angelica (Pilar López de
Ayala), has died on her wedding day and her family needs a
photograph of the dead girl, a memento mori of the recently
deceased. The devout Catholic family is at first unsure they want
a Jew for the job. But it is an emergency. As Isaac looks through
his lens at the beautiful corpse he sees or imagines he sees her
smile at him. He is immediately smitten with love for her and for
days after he is obsessed with his memories of the beautiful--yes,
angelic--face.

Ironically, Isaac, an outsider in this area, is interested in the
old ways of living. The people who live in the area are more
modern thinkers. Isaac is fascinated by photographing laborers as
they work in a field as they have for centuries. His landlady
believes that is foolish. After all, that work is embarrassing.
As she tells some friends or boarders over the dinner table, that
sort of work is and should be done by machines today.

Quite unexpectedly for de Oliveira there are some visual effects.
Somehow that does not seem his usual style (though admittedly I
have actually seen only one of his other films, I'M GOING HOME).
His style seems too organic to for visual effects. But while his
effects may be technical, the images he creates with them remind
one of effects in George Melies's silent films and the images he
creates remind one of surrealist Mark Chagall. The slow pacing is
matched with soft piano music and more often silence.

This is both a romance and a ghost story, but fans of neither genre
will get much to satisfy them is what is really too sparse a film
for its own good. I rate THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA a +1 on the
-4 to +4 scale or 6/10. It makes little sense to call this film
THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA. If anything it should be THE STRANGE
CASE OF ISAAC. Only Isaac knows that Angelica is at all involved.